Sending the Right Message at the Right Time

We’ve all become aware of the power of mobile marketing over the past few years, and with more and more money being invested in mobile advertising it will become increasingly important that you not only send the right message to your customers, but that you send it at the right time. We all remember the infamous VP announcement in the 2008 Presidential campaign, and want to ensure that you don’t make mistakes that history has already corrected.

We live in a world of instant interconnectivity, one where we see Political polls and measurements coming in the form of tweets and text votes, rather than the tried and true Gallup poll. With the United States already at over 100% mobile penetration, we are also reaching a point in which the world will soon have more mobile phone subscriptions than human beings. And according to this Mashable article,

“While voice is still the primary use for mobile device, texting comes in at a close second. Nearly 5 trillion text messages were sent in just 2010 alone. Those 160-character snips accounted for 80% of operator revenue — that’s a whopping $106 billion.”

As an example, Twitter has been around roughly since 2007, and we’re just now figuring out how to best use Twitter, and some marketers still are failing miserably at it. Considering that mobile marketing, and text messaging in particular, have been around much longer, we should know much more about how to do it well.

There are studies that show the science behind when and what to tweet, text, and email to your customers – and we’ll recap the important points for you below (with a little more focus on texting, but maybe we’re biased).

Twittersphere:
Not surprisingly, social media is a very effective form of interacting with customers. However, many businesses and brands rely on sending messages out during the work day (while they’re working – obviously). But studies have shown that some of the best times to engage customers on Twitter is during the weekend.

“Engagement rates for sports brands are typically up to 52% higher than average on weekends, while apparel companies can see increases of more than 30%. As for the best time of the day to tweet, as long as marketers are active between the peak usage hours of 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. they’ll get about 30% more interest than they would by posting at any other time. If you’re posting links, however, aim for sometime between 1 and 3 p.m., as this is the time frame in which they’re likely to get the most clicks.”

Emails:
Emails seem to be most personalized when it comes to promoting your brand. The best time seems to differ based on what your customer’s trends seem to be in interacting with your brand.

“If your audience tends to make purchases during the lunch hour, send prior to that to get on their radar, perhaps including a time-sensitive deal. If your customers patronize your business most on the weekends, it follows that you should shoot for later in the week.”

Mobile and Text Messaging:
One of the best suggestions that we’ve always had for clients is to send out time-sensitive messages and offers to customers – allowing brands to engage their customers and increase revenue at times that are best for them. By planning timed messages based on when your customers will be most likely to interact with and purchase from your brand, businesses can easily increase revenue on the mobile channel.

“Some brands, like restaurants and food services, would do well to employ day-part targeting on mobile ad networks, aiming for the times of day that food is top of mind for consumers. Others might require a more tactile strategy, like studying website analytics for visitation trends and translating that usage structure into a mobile campaign. Either way, with its reams of data on past client and category successes, your mobile ad network is a good place to start formulating your plan.”

Regardless of the channel your business chooses to move forward in, it is key that you put thought into what message you’re sending, and when you’re sending it. With the increase in mobile connections worldwide, it is becoming even more important that brands put thought into how and when they’re engaging their customers on this highly personal channel. To learn more about how we coach our customers to see the best results from mobile marketing, give us a call today.

Author Mobivity

We work with restaurants and local businesses to bring more customers more often through mobile marketing.

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About Mobivity

Mobivity provides a platform for intelligent and personalized marketing in the real world. We leverage detailed purchase data and communications platforms to improve business results by understanding, predicting, and influencing consumer behavior.